It’s been a turbulent five months for me as I have been going through cancer treatment, but I’m coming out the other side now and enjoying the spring sunshine as well as the daily prompts for NaPoWriMo 2016 which I’ve been posting on my blog throughout April. Thanks go to my husband Iain for dealing with a lot of the book administration when I wasn’t up to it!

Thanks also go to all the people who have kept me cheered with cards, flowers and chocolates. The parcels are still coming! Yesterday brought this delightful selection from Gabriele Haefs in Germany.

I’m delighted to receive this signed copy of Christine Vogeley’s ‘Sternschnuppensommer’, some chocolate and the first review of ‘Shifting Sands’ in German, written by Gabriele for Folkmagazin.

Scottish Book: One of Christine Cochrane’s short stories has appeared in German (in the anthology ‘Weibsbilder’ from Edition Narrenflug). It’s a story a bit like a Scottish ballad about a ‘selkie’, a seal who takes the form of a woman and who comes on land to create misfortune. This story appears in Christine’s new collection of short stories which has just come out in English. You might imagine that she only writes fairy-tales like this one, but the other stories are firmly rooted in the here and now. The characters are not just in the Hebrides or Glasgow. She takes us to Spain and even to Schwerin in Germany. And music is always there in the background; a confused old lady in a care home suddenly remembers a song that she once sang with great success, a young widow wants a new life as a singer despite the resistance of her family. And there’s a middle aged couple who retire to Spain; the husband unpacks his old guitar and instead of playing ‘Streets of London’ learns flamenco. That gives an impression of the nice variety of the stories! It’s not yet available in German, so we recommend getting the English edition through http://www.lumphananpress.co.uk.